A couple of days ago I tossed off a comment on Facebook criticizing a particularly foolish moment of protest against Trump. There was an explosion of comments from people on the left, many of whom claimed to be in states of outraged disbelief that I would dare to criticize any form of protest against Trump/Pence. I tried to point out that I published tens of thousands of words before election day to try to prevent the present outcome, but now that it is here, I feel that a different strategy is called for. What some seem to advocate is the right to, and the righteousness of, tantrum politics. Like people who foolishly did protest votes, or who claimed they were protesting by not voting, they refuse to see that if you care about political outcomes then you are forced to care about discerning different shades of grey, the art and science of compromise, collective psychology and strategy. Endless public and private expressions of dislike that don’t accomplish anything easily devolve into self-indulgent wastes of energy. A more efficient use of that energy would have been to work to get the vote out for the candidate who could have beaten Trump on election day. Yeah, I wanted Bernie too, but on election day his name wasn’t on the ballot. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren recognized that the best use of their energy was to try to get the vote out for HRC, but many of those invested in tantrum politics were too pure to recognize the one realpolitik alternative to Trump on election day.
What I am getting from people on social media who feel stressed out about the results of the election (as I certainly do) is that any form of protest should be praised no matter how counter-productive. They side with acting-out rebelliousness, while I would rather see energy saved for effective forms of rebellion. Expressing hatred for Trump to like-minded friends on Facebook might be a fine way to vent for a bit, but after a certain point it just becomes ineffectual, time-wasting rebelliousness that accomplishes nothing. People who prefer to use their rebellion energy more effectually are doing things like making donations to the ACLU so that legal fire power can be focused on specific unconstitutional things Trump might do.
On the other hand, I fully recognize and embrace that not all activism has to involve practical action. Trump, and almost all human problems are 100% products of human psychology, and human psychology is often best shifted through cultural products like satire, and through inducing alternate visions in people through fantasy writing and film. I focus most of my efforts on the cultural approach to shifting the matrix.
If you want to spin your wheels for four years then you can put your efforts into tantrum politics, mouthing off to people who agree with you already or to people who disagree with you completely so that your mouthing off to them gets them to harden their contrary positions. You can continue to refuse to compromise, refuse to settle for light grey over very dark grey so that you maintain your purity and don’t descend into strategic thinking about politics or dirty yourself by considering how laws are passed and the messy details of how our political system actually works.
Here’s an example of strategy when it comes to dealing with bullies that I learned when I was the dean and building security coordinator of a public high school in the South Bronx during the years of the crack epidemic:
Give a bully a face-saving way out of a conflict.
Sometimes it is best just to focus on beating a bully and taking away their freedom to do harm. But that does not always work. This election has put it in our face—despite our preferences, bullies often win or are in positions of at least temporary power. If a bully has a gun and all you have is a walkie-talkie just trying to whoop their ass, or telling them what a pathetic bully they are is not an effective strategy. Bullies tend to be pride driven, and if you want them to back down before they hurt someone, giving them a face-saving way to back down is often the most effective strategy.
Look at the way someone who knows far more about political strategy than the tantrum folks is handling Donald Trump. Barak Obama managed to win two out of two presidential elections despite having worse demographics to deal with and being a black guy. Before the election, he was dissing Donald Trump every way he could and working as hard as possible to promote the one candidate who ended up on the ballot that could have beaten Trump. Once the bully won, however, he shifted strategy on a dime and in a graceful and efficient way. He gave a brilliant demonstration of civility and dignified transfer of power. And he’s become almost like a Trump-whisperer able to convince him, after just one face-to-face meeting, to keep the most valuable provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act, etc. Trump has privately been praising Obama and the guidance he’s been giving him. Obama is not naïve about Trump. He knows exactly how dangerous a bully he can be. Just yesterday he said publicly that in the future he might have to adamantly resist Trump on certain things. What he’s doing is being something the pure/tantrum folks can’t descend to the messy level of—he is being psychological, strategic, adaptable, shrewd, street wise and possibly effectual in bully management.
Right now, the tantrum folk want to nail Trump on all his foolish promises.
What happened to prosecuting Hillary?
So where’s this wall you said you were going to build?
I thought you were going to deport millions of people.
I thought you were going to repeal Obamacare on day one.
What happened to the Muslim ban?
A more psychological and strategic approach is to give him a face-saving way out of these absurd positions. Give him space to flip-flop and let people say he is a genius for knowing how to be adaptable. Let the people who voted for him hold him accountable for broken promises in 2020. Use the common sense that any school teacher learns to manage bullies: Give positive reinforcement when the bully acts reasonable. Realize that negative reinforcement—constant protests and attention to every stupid tweet for example—promotes the behaviors you are trying to reduce. Trump is not Hitler, not yet at least. It isn’t time yet for fight-to-the-death absolutism. We’ve survived bad presidents before. It wasn’t easy, but we got through eight years of W. Take a deep breath.
Conserve your protest and rebellion resources. As Goethe said, “A master first reveals himself by holding back.” The Zen Archer who hits the mark does so because she holds the arrow back until just the right moment. If you want to have a Facebook tantrum about every stupid Trump-tweet, go for it. Alternatively, you can hold back a bit and then, when Trump actually tries to do specific things that are unconstitutional, strategically focus all your energy, all the firepower—all the money, lawyering, counter legislation, cultural resources, whatever, on defeating those specific things.
